Wyhl nuclear power plant

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Wyhl nuclear power plant
location
Wyhl nuclear power plant (Baden-Württemberg)
Wyhl nuclear power plant
Coordinates 48 ° 11 '10 "  N , 7 ° 38' 29"  E Coordinates: 48 ° 11 '10 "  N , 7 ° 38' 29"  E
Country: Germany
Data
Owner: Kernkraftwerk Süd GmbH
Operator: Kernkraftwerk Süd GmbH
Project start: 1973
Shutdown: 1977

Construction discontinued (gross):

1 (1375 MW)

Planning set (gross):

1 (1375 MW)
Was standing: May 30, 2008
The data source of the respective entries can be found in the documentation .
f1

The planned Wyhl nuclear power plant (also known as the South Nuclear Power Plant , KWS) near Wyhl am Kaiserstuhl was to include two reactor blocks of the 1300 megawatt class (electrical output), but only received a partial construction permit for Block I. The construction of a reactor building for Unit I had already started; as a result of massive protests by the anti-nuclear power movement, which was still in the process of being formed, and a construction freeze initiated by the Freiburg Administrative Court, construction work was stopped in 1977; The project itself was not "officially" ended as a political decision in 1994.

This makes the Wyhl NPP the first (planned) nuclear power plant in Germany whose construction was prevented on the initiative of the anti-nuclear movement.

planning

Initially, the south nuclear power plant was planned for the nearby town of Breisach . However, this was rejected by the local population, mainly because of the wet cooling towers intended to dissipate waste heat , the emissions of which farmers and winegrowers in the area expected negative climatic effects. On July 19, 1973, it was announced on the radio that the Breisach site would be given up and the power plant in Wyhl am Kaiserstuhl would be built. The new location was only a few kilometers away from the old one: Two pressurized water reactors of the Union power plant of the 1300 megawatt class of the pre-convoy type with a thermal output of 3762 MW each and an electrical output of between approx. 1200 and approx. 1300 MW ( depending on the type of cooling), each with an approximately 150 m high natural draft wet cooling tower .

Protests, legal proceedings, project assignment

Stickers against the construction of the Wyhl nuclear power plant, 1975
The criticism of the Wyhl NPP was still subtle at the end of the 1970s: “Kraft” is carved under the “Mafia” sign
Stone to commemorate the day the site was occupied "NAI HÄMMER GSAIT!" (Alemannic for "We said no!")

Shortly after the announcement, 27 citizens from Wyhl began to protest against the construction of the planned power plant. Soon afterwards, initiatives were set up in the surrounding villages as well as in neighboring French Alsace : condensation vapors from the cooling towers could reduce solar radiation and increase fog, cooling water from the power station could heat the Rhine and endanger its biological balance , but above all the development of the Rhine valley into an industrial one Zone, a “second Ruhr area”, were the first reasons for the rejection.

In a letter dated October 10, 1973, KWS applied to the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Economics to approve the construction of a nuclear power plant on the Rhine at river kilometer 246 and to initially issue a partial construction permit. The motion was announced in May 1974, including the usual documents, and the opportunity to raise objections within a month. In total, more than 89,000 objections were raised. On July 9 and 10, 1974, a public hearing was held in Wyhl to discuss the objections raised. Numerous letters were also sent to the Federal Minister of the Interior, Werner Maihofer , including a letter from the pastor of Emmendingen-Windenreute dated August 9, 1974, in which he expressed his disappointment with the course of the discussion on the construction of the nuclear power plant in Wyhl.

Preceded and constitutive for the local opposition to the nuclear power plant was successfully runny fight against the establishment of a Lead - chemistry -Werks in Marckolsheim in neighboring French Alsace on the western side of the Rhine .

On January 12, 1975, 55 percent of the citizens of Wyhl who were eligible to vote voted in a referendum to sell the planned site to KWS because they hoped for jobs. On January 22, 1975, the Stuttgart Ministry of Economic Affairs granted KWS the "First Partial Construction Permit" for the "South Nuclear Power Plant", which, however, was subject to numerous conditions. The objections raised were rejected and immediate execution ordered.

The legal dispute from 1975

On February 21, 1975, several municipalities and private individuals brought an action against the partial construction permit at the Freiburg Administrative Court. They complained that the challenged permit should not have been granted because it lacks the necessary protection against harmful environmental effects. In their opinion, considerable disadvantages are to be feared, which could result from the heat dissipation associated with the operation of the nuclear power plant through cooling water and from the unavoidable radioactivity releases. They also complained that the required safety against accidents was not guaranteed.

In parallel to the proceedings initiated with the lawsuits in the main matter, the plaintiffs have applied for provisional legal protection in order to prevent KWS from creating facts with the construction due to the ordered immediate execution until the conclusion of the main proceedings - a considerable duration of the proceedings was foreseeable.

On February 17, 1975, the construction of the construction site for Block I began, which was legally permissible. The decision of the Freiburg administrative court in the express proceedings was still pending at this point in time. The following day the construction site was occupied by protesters, evacuated by the police and reoccupied.

By order of March 14, 1975, the administrative court suspended the immediate execution of the first partial construction permit (TEG) and thus ordered a construction freeze. According to the court, it is not yet possible to predict whether the applicants will likely be successful in the main proceedings. A decision on this can only be made after evidence has been taken in the main proceedings. The court therefore carried out a weighing of interests in which it assessed the interests of the applicants in postponing the construction work more than the interests of the state and KWS in securing the electricity supply. It was based on the assumption that the applicants could not only refer to the consequences that the construction of the power plant itself would cause, but also to the effects that later operation could have.

On May 27, 1975, a special meeting of the state government took place, which dealt with the further procedure.

On October 14, 1975, the building freeze imposed by the Freiburg Administrative Court in March 1975 was lifted by the Baden-Württemberg Administrative Court in Mannheim due to complaints from the state government under Prime Minister Hans Filbinger and KWS . The VGH also saw the likely outcome of the main proceedings as open and weighed up interests, which turned out to be in favor of the state and KWS. The applicants could not be affected by the approved construction of the power plant alone. The VGH judges emphasized, however, that the risk for the start of the approved construction phase had to be borne by KWS itself and that the decision on the main issue, which the Freiburg Administrative Court had to make, could still be to its disadvantage. The occupants of the building site, who had blocked the building site since February 18, 1975, described the decision as a first failure of their work.

The Battelle Institute worked out a strategy for the negotiations on behalf of the state government for a fee of DM 950,000.00. The result culminated in the Offenburg talks , in which the state government managed to get the protesters to leave the occupied building site in November 1975.

Nevertheless, on October 8, 1976, around 1000 citizens demonstrated against Prime Minister Filbinger in neighboring Kiechlinsbergen and on October 30, 1976, around 1000 people also demonstrated during the "inspection of the square" in the Wyhl forest. On November 6th, around 1,200 people took part in the “solidarity torchlight procession” against the Brokdorf nuclear power plant in downtown Freiburg. After further building preparations and the installation of a construction site power connection, the construction site was again occupied by protesters.

In preparation for the oral hearing in the main proceedings planned at the beginning of 1977, the Freiburg Administrative Court reached an agreement with all those involved in a coordinated, speedy and transparent procedure. The entire content of the dispute to be discussed with the experts was incorporated into a 100-question questionnaire, the final version of which included the suggestions of all those involved. The question of which experts should be heard was also resolved by consensus with those involved.

The court (three professional and two honorary judges) held oral hearings on twelve days from January 27 to February 16, 1977 in the Herbolzheimer Breisgauhalle. Between 300 and 500 people attended the trial as observers every day. With prudence and patience, the presiding judge succeeded in creating a decidedly factual atmosphere. A motion to reject a judge because of bias concerns was not filed . The statements of the 53 experts who were heard were recorded on 180 tapes, immediately transmitted in writing and presented to the experts. The verbatim transcript comprised a total of around 1500 pages.

With its rulings announced on March 14, 1977 in the Freiburg Regional Court, the court upheld the complaints because, according to the “unanimous opinion of the Chamber”, the legal requirement for approval was missing that the “necessary precautions against damage” had to be taken. A bursting of the reactor pressure vessel is extremely unlikely, but causes such catastrophic damage that "according to the value standards represented by the chamber" cannot be viewed as a negligible residual risk, and the reactor can therefore only be built with a burst protection device, as it is for a nuclear power plant planned in Ludwigshafen with a less powerful pressurized water reactor was provided. This result was obviously perceived as surprising by all those involved, although 28 of the 100 questions discussed at the hearing related to reactor safety and thus the bursting protection was also discussed in more detail.

The Freiburg administrative judges also found that they had not convinced the plaintiffs' numerous other objections to the legality of the approval granted. It was expressly answered in the negative, among other things, whether the dissipation of two thirds of the heat generated by cooling water, which is inevitably associated with the operation of the planned nuclear power plant in the Wyhl district, could have such negative consequences for the plaintiffs that their rights would be violated. It was this site-specific concern in particular that prompted the plaintiffs to take legal action against the permit granted to KWS.

In a letter from Baden-Württemberg's Minister of Education, Wilhelm Hahn (CDU) to Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (SPD) on April 5, 1977, the Minister, representing the Prime Minister, expressed concern about the possible construction of a nuclear power plant in Marckolsheim in France. In the course of further resistance, also in the organizationally, spatially and temporally closely linked commitment and fight against the construction of the Fessenheim nuclear power plant further south in the " Dreyeckland " in Alsace, the self-organized independent Radio Verte Fessenheim, which initially broadcast illegally , was created in 1977 . As the oldest non-commercial private radio in Germany, it still broadcasts from Freiburg im Breisgau under “ Radio Dreyeckland ” .

The attached KWS appealed against the Freiburg Wyhl judgments announced on March 14, 1977, on March 18, 1977 and the defendant state on April 4, 1977. The Administrative Court of Baden-Württemberg in Mannheim obtained a large number of written expert reports as part of the taking of evidence. In the period from May 30, 1979 to November 4, 1981, oral negotiations were held on 13 days in Mannheim in order to also discuss the written reports with the experts. By judgment of March 30, 1982 the VGH changed the judgments of the VG Freiburg and dismissed the complaints. The VGH saw it as clarified by the taking of evidence that, above all, a catastrophic failure of the reactor pressure vessel was “practically impossible” and that additional burst protection was not required. The plaintiffs would have to accept the remaining residual risk. The Mannheim VGH and the Freiburg Administrative Court did not share the plaintiffs' other concerns about the legality of the challenged license. As a reaction to this judgment, a rally with over 30,000 nuclear power plant opponents took place in Wyhl.

The plaintiffs were unsuccessful with their appeal, which was approved by the Mannheim VGH in its judgment and which the Federal Administrative Court ruled on December 19, 1985 a few months before the catastrophic accident in Chernobyl on April 26, 1986. Unlike in his relevant case law up to this judgment, which was based on a comprehensive control obligation of the administrative courts (hence the time-consuming evidence of the VG Freiburg and the Mannheim VGH), it was now said that it could not be a matter of the administrative court control, "the to replace the evaluation of scientific controversial issues assigned to the executive, including the resulting risk assessment, with one's own evaluation ”. This restriction of the judicial "density of control" has been criticized in jurisprudence for important reasons. The unlimited risk potential of large-scale systems - according to the constitutional and administrative lawyer Jörn Ipsen - corresponds solely to the unrestricted judicial control of the system permits.

The project task as a political decision

After Prime Minister Filbinger announced in spring 1975 that "the lights would go out" in the "Ländle" ( Baden-Württemberg ) without the construction of the nuclear power plant, the incumbent Prime Minister Lothar Späth (CDU) surprisingly declared in 1983 that the Wyhl nuclear power plant would not be needed before 1993. In 1987 he reaffirmed his decision to abandon the project until 2000. Then in 1994, eight years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster , the project to build a nuclear power plant near Wyhl was "officially" discontinued.

The former building site has been designated as a nature reserve since 1995 .

By the end of the 1990s, a 160-meter-high steel lattice mast spanned by a cable network with a traverse at the top was erected on the power plant site. After, several were meteorological equipment to determine the wind speed and direction and any of the information obtained thereby data impact of rising from the cooling towers heat with their clouds forming water vapor - condensate to estimate the regional weather patterns.

The resistance to the construction of a nuclear power plant at the Kaiserstuhl was borne by broad sections of the regional population, by parts of the local clergy as well as by farmers as well as academics and intellectuals as well as artists, but above all by many traditional CDU supporters (sat in the area a massive decline among party members) and was largely peaceful. The successful protest also had a signal effect on the resistance against nuclear facilities in other locations such as Brokdorf , Grohnde or Kaiseraugst (Switzerland). The peaceful character of the anti-nuclear power movement was partly lost there: During the fight against the construction of the Brokdorf nuclear power plant in autumn 1976, civil war-like battles between police and demonstrators broke out.

In addition, the resistance can be seen as a fundamental impetus for the modern anti-nuclear , citizens' initiatives and environmental movements in Germany, including the formation and foundation of a " green " party .

Even if the Freiburg Wyhl judgments were not confirmed and there was no legal obstacle to the construction of the nuclear power plant in Wyhl, the conviction that the risk associated with the operation of nuclear power plants was underestimated gained ground year after year - not least because of the reactor accidents in Harrisburg (1979) and Chernobyl (1986). In 2002, a ban on the construction of new nuclear power plants was finally enshrined in the Atomic Energy Act.

Where the components are located

The large components already manufactured for Unit 1 (e.g. steam generator and reactor pressure vessel ) were used for the Philippsburg 2 nuclear power plant . Originally, this was almost 100% identical in construction and drawing to the once planned Block 1 in Wyhl. Philippsburg 2 was shut down on December 31, 2019.

Data of the reactor blocks

Two reactors were planned:

Reactor block Reactor type net
power 		gross
power 		Beginning of project planning start of building Project setting
Wyhl-1 Pressurized water reactor 1,300 MW 1,375 MW 1973 1975 1995
Wyhl-2 Pressurized water reactor 1,300 MW 1,375 MW 1973 - 1995

Commemoration, reception

There are many contributions to commemorate the successful resistance: For example, there is a much-visited memorial stone in the Rheinauewald von Wyhl (placed in 2000 with the State Secretary in the Federal Environment Ministry , MdB Gila Altmann ). On the occasion of the "40 Years of Resistance" celebration, a further memorial stone was inaugurated by Regional Bishop Fischer on February 28, 2012 in front of the Protestant parish hall in Weisweil.

An archive of the Badisch-Alsatian citizens' initiatives has been set up in the town hall of Weisweil, which provides a comprehensive insight into the history of the prevention of the nuclear power plant in Wyhl.

exhibition

  • Citizens, help yourselves. Wyhl - an example . Photos by Manfred Richter, Emmendingen Town Hall , February to April 2015.

Movies

  • 1976, Nina Gladitz : Better to be active today than radioactive tomorrow .
    • NDR , Karsten Biehl, Eberhard Hollweg: Brokdorf - a second Wyhl? .
  • 1982, directing collective Medienwerkstatt Freiburg : S'Weschpe-Näscht. The Wyhl Chronicle 1970 to 1982 .
  • 2015, Bodo Kaiser, Siggi Held: Wyhl and the Left - Stories from the Wyhl Forest .

Literature and materials

See also

Web links

Commons : Protest against the Wyhl nuclear power plant  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Document  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (RTF)@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / db.swr.de  
  2. ↑ a b Wyhl 1 nuclear power plant in the IAEA's PRIS ( Memento from June 4, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  3. ↑ a b c d freidok.uni-freiburg.de: The resistance against the Wyhl nuclear power plant (pdf; 3.6 MB)
  4. ^ Hans-Helmut Wüstenhagen: Citizens against nuclear power plants. Wyhl the beginning? rororo aktuell, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1975, ISBN 3-499-11949-8 , p. 13ff.
  5. ↑ See announcement of the application in the state gazette for BW and in the Badische Zeitung v. May 18, 1974
  6. ↑ See the judgments of the VG Freiburg v. March 14, 1977 and the VGH Mannheim of March 30, 1982.
  7. ↑ Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland , Regionalverband Südlicher Oberrhein , Freiburg , August 20, 2014: bund-rvso.de: Construction site occupation Marckolsheim Alsace 1974–1975: An important impulse for the environmental movement
  8. ↑ Badische Zeitung: Akw Wyhl: 40 years ago, it gave the green light for the construction - South West - Badische Zeitung. Retrieved May 30, 2020 .
  9. ↑ a b c d Hartmut Albers: Court decisions on nuclear power plants, arguments in the energy discussion . Ed .: Volker Hauff. tape 10 . Villingen-Schwenningen 1980, ISBN 3-7883-0834-6 , p. 59 ff .
  10. ↑ Hanno Kühnert : At the round table. In: The time . January 28, 1977. Retrieved January 25, 2009 .
  11. ^ Rheinische Post . October 15, 1975, p. 1.
  12. ↑ a b badische-zeitung.de , March 11, 2017, Joachim von Bargen (participating administrative judge ): When Wyhl was prevented: The judges and the residual risk (March 12, 2017)
  13. ↑ a b c cf. Neue Juristische Wochenschrift (NJW) 1977, p. 1645 ff.
  14. ^ Public administration (DÖV) 1982, p. 863 ff.
  15. ↑ a b cf. Administrative papers Baden-Württemberg (VBlBW) 1986, p. 170 ff.
  16. ↑ See the publications of the Association of German Constitutional Law Teachers, Issue 48, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-11-012565-X , pp. 177 ff., 201.
  17. ^ "Without the Wyhl nuclear power plant, the first lights will go out in Baden-Württemberg at the end of the decade." Hans Filbinger on February 27, 1975 in the state parliament at the state center for political education
  18. ↑ Badische Zeitung: Akw Wyhl: 40 years ago, it gave the green light for the construction - South West - Badische Zeitung. Retrieved May 30, 2020 .
  19. ^ Badische Zeitung: Mourning for nature conservationists and nuclear power opponents Meinrad Schwörer - Wyhl - Badische Zeitung. Retrieved May 30, 2020 .
  20. ↑ WNA Reactor Database (English)
  21. ↑ Jens Ivo Engels: Natural Policy in the Federal Republic. World of ideas and political behavior styles in nature conservation and the environmental movement. 1950-1980. 2006, p. 352.
  22. ↑ With the wide angle in the Wyhl forest
  23. ^ Bettina Schulte: The communists in the Wyhler forest. In: Badische-zeitung.de , February 13, 2015.
  24. ↑ Wulf Rüskamp: Beyond the borders . In: Badische-zeitung.de , December 31, 2014.
  25. ↑ Thematic show on 40 years of nuclear power plant in Emmendingen. In: Badische-zeitung.de , February 13, 2015.